ASX enables Allscripts clients, partners and other organizations to add to the company’s open product platform, while ARN makes it easy to deliver seamless electronic patient referrals within the Allscripts client base of 180,000 physicians, 1,500 hospitals and 10,000 post acute care organizations – the largest connected network in healthcare.

“We believe these two simple innovations, paired with our open architecture, can help to transform healthcare,” said Glen Tullman, Chief Executive Officer of Allscripts. “The Application Store & Exchange works like the Apple App Store to let everyone contribute to making healthcare better, while the Allscripts Referral Network enables our clients to create an electronic workflow with their referring partners, improving care coordination and efficiency. If you’re on ARN, you will be connected to a third of the healthcare providers in the United States.”

The Allscripts Application Store & Exchange

The Allscripts Application Store & Exchange is an online marketplace accessible by all of Allscripts hospital and physician clients and partners, allowing them to create, add, and connect to third-party applications. The Application Store & Exchange, which goes live today, enables Allscripts clients to access a wide range of Allscripts-built and third-party applications developed by registered, approved partners and clients, at lower cost and faster than otherwise possible.

“We’ve clearly seen this work in other industries and the time is now for healthcare to benefit from the same kind of innovation and collaboration,” said Connie Suozzo, Vice President of Product Development Operations for Allscripts. “The smartest physicians, nurses and other caregivers in the world use our software and we want their ideas to become an integral part of the solution.”

The Application Store & Exchange provides information and links on technologies developed by registered participants in the Allscripts Developer Program. Featured applications leverage the Helios by Allscripts™ open architecture platform to natively integrate with Allscripts clinical, revenue cycle and performance management solutions. The first applications to be featured on the Application Store & Exchange include:

HCS Medication Reconciliation, a complete solution to address one of the most complex processes confronting hospitals today. Developed for Allscripts clients by HealthCare System, Inc., the solution queries multiple national data sources including pharmacy benefit managers, insurance companies, and retail pharmacies to provide clinicians with a record of the medications a patient has filled within the last 12 months.

Positive ID Director for Allscripts, a fingerprint authentication system from BIO-key International, that enables any authorized user to securely access any module of the Sunrise Enterprise™ suite of acute care solutions using a single swipe or press of their finger. The solution works on virtually any sensor, whether on mobile devices, tablets, or shared workstations, and also meets the new DEA ePrescribing authentication requirements.

Allscripts will continuously add applications, integration options and other tools to the Application Store & Exchange to help clients access new innovations. Today, over 100 third parties are in active discussions for building applications that will integrate with the Sunrise and Enterprise EHR applications, leveraging the power of the entire healthcare community.

The Allscripts Referral Network

A breakthrough in health information exchange, the new Allscripts Referral Network enables physicians to easily send, receive and track round-trip patient referrals to physicians and post-acute providers, as well as collaborate via secure messages throughout the referral process. Available at no additional charge to users of any ARRA-certified Allscripts Electronic Health Record(EHR), as well as users of Allscripts ePrescribe™, the service enhances care coordination, promotes quality of care, and reduces administrative time and hassle associated with referral management, one of the most time consuming physician tasks.

The average primary care physician group spends approximately $1,000 per physician per month in staff time managing patient referrals, according to industry estimates. Electronic referrals in the Allscripts Referral Network reduce staff expense and enable caregivers to have the right information at the right time to provide appropriate care. The Allscripts Referral Network also makes practices easy to do business with, driving incremental referral revenue.

“Sending and tracking paper referrals back and forth between our multi-specialty physicians and outside referring partners is time-consuming but it’s also a critical element of care coordination,” said Praveen Toteja, Chief Information Officer of George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates, the 385-physician faculty practice of the George Washington University School of Medicine in Washington, DC. “The Allscripts Referral Network makes the whole process easy, intuitive, fast and much more efficient. Best of all, patient referrals are fully integrated within the EHR so our physicians and support staff can handle referrals using the process they’re accustomed to, and we don’t have to ask them to learn yet another workflow.”

The Allscripts Referral Network connects physicians who utilize an Allscripts EHR, as well as the nearly 110,000 homecare, hospice, skilled nursing and other post-acute providers who receive referrals through the Allscripts Referral Management solution. Physician practices that currently lack an EHR can participate in the service via their use of the free Allscripts ePrescribe solution, or as a sponsored user in a group or community that purchases referrals with ePrescribe. In addition, the Allscripts Referral Network offers an optional e-fax service that seamlessly faxes referrals to users who lack connectivity, while Allscripts users enjoy the same electronic workflow.

“Our multi-specialty physicians have been asking for an easy way to accept electronic referrals that synchronize the patient’s information with their EHR workflow, and two-way tracking to reduce the time their staff spends managing referrals,” said Steven Adkins, MD, Chief Medical Information Officer of Holston Medical Group (HMG) in Kingsport, Tenn. “The Allscripts Referral Network is a welcome advance that marks a clear win for our practice.”

HMG, a pioneer in the design and implementation of Electronic Health Records, introduced its first EHR in 1995. Today, the practice’s 150 physicians are virtually paper-free.

“Allscripts Referral Network is one of the tools that positions Allscripts as the ‘Facebook of Healthcare’, connecting 180,000 physicians, 1,500 hospitals and 10,000 post acute care facilities and doing it for free,” said Mr. Tullman. “It doesn’t require any additional training and comes embedded in every new ARRA-Certified Allscripts EHR. We think this will help begin to change the connectivity game in healthcare. The new question will be ‘are you connected?'”

Allscripts also is actively participating in the Direct Project, a secure Internet-based approach for direct transport of structured and unstructured health information being led by Arien Malec and Doug Fridsma in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s (ONC) Office of Standards and Interoperability. On Feb. 2, Mr. Tullman joined Aneesh Chopra, the White House Chief Technology Officer, Dr. David Blumenthal, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, and Farzad Mostashari, MD, Deputy National Coordinator for ONC, in a press conference announcing pilot demonstrations of the Direct Project, including at Allscripts client Albany Medical Center in Albany, New York.

HIMSS attendees can view a demonstration of the Application Store & Exchange by visiting the Expert Bar in the Allscripts booth (#2241, Hall A).

Clients wishing to learn more about the Application Store & Exchange can log on to the Allscripts Client Site.

For more information on the Allscripts Developer Program and to contribute applications to ASX, visit www.allscripts.com/adp.

About Allscripts

Allscripts provides innovative solutions that empower all stakeholders across the healthcare continuum to deliver world-class outcomes. The company’s clinical, financial, connectivity and information solutions for hospitals, physicians and post-acute organizations are the essential technologies that enable a Connected Community of Health™. To learn more about Allscripts, please visit www.allscripts.com, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Get Connected with Allscripts at HIMSS

Visit our websiteto discuss the conference and find out more about the Allscripts booth #2241 (Hall A). Follow us on Twitter: @Allscripts or @connectptdata.

“Hospitals are advocating for VNAs for three reasons. They can’t share images trapped in their various PACS systems. They can’t afford the costly data migrations from one PACS to the next. And they’re tired of being handcuffed to their PACS vendors without practical options for storing, sharing and protecting patient data,” said Ken Rubin, senior vice president of healthcare services for Iron Mountain. “Iron Mountain is ideally suited to deliver vendor neutral archiving because our customers understand we’re truly vendor neutral and they trust the security and reliability of our cloud storage platform. And, when you combine our VNA capabilities with our archiving and back-up cloud services, we can provide customers with an enterprise-wide archiving and back-up solution for not only medical images but for other primary applications in a healthcare organization.”

The HIMSS Davies Awards of Excellence recognize excellence in the implementation of and value from health information technology

CHICAGO (September 15, 2010) – Since 1994, the HIMSS Davies Awards of Excellence have recognized management, functionality, technology and value – the pillars of health IT success. The six winners of the 2010 HIMSS Davies Awards deliver quality care to the patients and populations they serve through the use of information technology – specifically the electronic health record. As healthcare leaders, these 2010 winners of the HIMSS Davies Awards of Excellence appear below in the four award categories: organizational, ambulatory, community health organization and public health. Continue reading: National HIMSS Davies Awards Recognize EHR Value, Improved Care

“Polycom understands the challenges faced by healthcare organizations today, and we’ve been improving communications in this industry for a number of years,” said Ron Emerson, director of Global Healthcare Markets for Polycom. “We provide a wide portfolio of solutions and services that meet healthcare providers’ needs, and we’re accelerating efforts with Polycom Open Collaboration Network (POCN) partners to offer our customers fully integrated end-to-end solutions that can help improve patient care and enable organizations to achieve greater efficiencies.”

The healthcare industry faces significant challenges, including healthcare provider shortages, an aging population with more than 70 million baby boomers, limited financial resources, remote and medically underserved areas, and rigorous continuing education requirements for certified healthcare professionals. To address these issues, Polycom provides unified communications (UC) solutions for the healthcare industry that address workflow, clinical needs and requirements for maintaining the highest level of patient care and privacy while optimizing resources. Polycom’s solutions for healthcare offer flexibility, scalability, durability, and mobility, all of which are key requirements in the medical industry.

“Polycom plays a pivotal role in creating a connected healthcare environment,” said Andrew R Watson, M.D., MLitt., medical director for the Center for Connected Medicine and vice president at UPMC. “Their work in telemedicine, conferencing, and other forms of communication fundamentally transforms the way providers see patients and interact with one another. Polycom’s technologies bring real cost efficiencies into the system while, also enabling high quality care.”

The Polycom connected healthcare demonstration at HIMSS10 exemplifies how seamless patient and caregiver communications can occur regardless of location, thereby improving patient outcomes and saving time and money for all involved. The demonstration illustrates a real-world scenario where a hospitalized patient communicates with healthcare providers both in the hospital and remotely via Polycom systems. Remote physicians are able to assess the patient, prescribe treatment and confirm that the course of treatment is being followed. One example is a telestroke scenario where Dr. Deborah A. Jeffries, Polycom director of healthcare markets, will evaluate the patient via video from one of two separate consultation areas. The technology solution highlights include:

Market-leading Polycom HDXTM telepresence systems leveraging the industry’s first delivery of H.264 High Profilevideo compression to deliver HD video from just 512 kbps for premium quality patient assessment, remote consultations, medical education and healthcare administration (including the Polycom Practitioner CartTM HDX) at a fraction of the average cost across the industry.

“We’re excited to be a part of the Polycom Connected Health demo at HIMSS10,” said Andrew Diamond, M.D. “Our innovative phone-centric solution for medical records, e-prescribing, and multi-office audiovisual communications seamlessly integrates with the open platform of the Polycom VVX 1500. Integrations such as this open up the market for new and innovative ways of communicating within the healthcare industry.”

Polycom’s integration efforts with its partners support Polycom’s Open Collaboration Network strategy, providing an open and interoperable collaboration solution that gives customers greater flexibility and investment protection for their UC environment. By working with leading unified communications platform providers, Polycom is able to deliver its productivity-enhancing and cost-saving telepresence, video and voice collaboration products as an integrated part of core unified communication environments, making the technologies easily accessible as part of the everyday workflow within a comprehensive solution that is easy to deploy and manage.

About PolycomPolycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM) is the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice solutions and a visionary in communications that empower people to connect and collaborate everywhere. Visit www.polycom.com for more information and follow us on Twitter @AllAboutPolycom.

The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, which was enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, significantly increased the HHS Secretary’s authority to impose higher monetary penalties for HIPAA violations occurring after Feb. 18, 2009.

Prior to the HITECH Act, the HHS Secretary could not impose a penalty of more than $100 for each violation or $25,000 for all identical violations of the same provision. A covered health care provider, health plan or clearinghouse could also bar the Secretary’s imposition of a civil money penalty by demonstrating that it was unaware that it violated the HIPAA rules.